The Giver

The Giver

Our first Christmas party this season is this Saturday night.  There is a white elephant gift exchange that night, and my wife, ever the faithful shopper has already purchased our gifts.  That seems incongruous, I know, as white elephant gifts by their very definition are supposed to be stuff one is more than willing to be rid of.  So, my wife bought more stuff to give away.  Actually, our gifts came from the church garage sale, proceeds benefitting the construction of a new foyer for the church.  So, we took our old stuff, transported it to the church, sold our old stuff, and a ton of other folk’s stuff to benefit the congregation.  That not being enough, we bought some other folk’s stuff, proceeds benefitting the church, to give away at a Christmas party, so that someone else might have the joy of getting rid of that very same stuff at some future point.  I’m not sure, but I believe there was some sort of altruistic logic in all of that.  However, it does make you wonder at the affluence among Americans that we have an entire multi-billion dollar industry forever churning through stuff.  That, I think, will be fodder for another blog.

We start this weekend on what I believe will be an unusual Christmas series.  There will be little, if any, of the traditional manger scene, Jesus, Joseph and Mary.  Instead, we will concentrate on the Giver of all god things – God, the Father.  The truth is that He has been presenting us with fantastic gifts since the beginning of time.  Life, mercy and grace have been around for a long, long time.  We no longer have the Garden of Eden, but this old world and the universe around her are pretty spectacular gifts.  Any negatives, come not from God, but the consequences of our sins.  As a matter of fact, this idea of the Giver of all good things is nothing new, James saw it some two millennia before we came around:

James 1:16-18(NIV)
¹⁶Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers.  ¹⁷Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.  ¹⁸He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.  

The series is titled, “A John 3:16 Christmas.”  Life, mercy, grace have been around for a long time.  Yes, we lost Eden, but because God loves humanity to the extent He sacrificed His perfect Son, we one day enter His mansion as God’s adopted children.  We get a new heaven and a new earth, and we live in a holy city, not just a garden.  We are so cluttered with stuff, and re-gifting stuff I think we miss the big picture of just how giving our God is, has been and forever will be.